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My parents drove me out to Fulton, Missouri to start my college experience in August of 1964.
I was 17, my Dad was 37 and my Mom 38. One of my suite mates was Hank Robb from Dallas, Texas, his Dad was 67.
He said, “It must be nice to have your brother drive you to college.”
I was embarrassed that my Dad looked like my brother.
I was very homesick for about a week. Then I got into the party mode of being away from home.
Steve Smith and I went to the one movie theatre in Fulton for an evening show . We bought our tickets and I started up to the balcony. An usher said, “No sir, Negroes upstairs, whites down.”
Wow, I wasn’t in New York anymore. Not that there isn’t racism in New York, it’s just not so blatant.
We brought a bottle of Sloe Gin which we sipped during the movie.
After the movie we went to Castle Rock in ‘brown town.”
Most of the Negroes in the town lived in “brown town.”
We tried to buy some beer at Castle Rock and did not succeed because we were underage.
An old black man came up to us, he was drunk and stumbling. “You fellas want some wine, come to my house and I’ll give you some of my wine.”
We followed him to a shack that was nearby. One room and we sat on the bed and drank his wine. It was awful.
We left there and went back to our dorm. I threw up all of the night. I barely survived and my Hudson Bay blanket barely survived. I haven’t had Sloe Gin since. It is made from the sloe berry.